Hunstanton, England: An international field featuring many of the world’s elite women’s amateur golfers will compete in The 119th Women’s Amateur Championship this week.
Entries for the Championship at Hunstanton (June 20-25) were received from golfers in 24 countries and a field of 144 players will tee it up on the championship links set on the northwest coast of Norfolk when 36 holes of stroke play qualifying begins on Monday.
The leading 64 players will then progress to the match play rounds and compete for a place in the 36-hole Final on Saturday (June 25). The winner will earn places in the AIG Women’s Open, US Women’s Open, The Amundi Evian Championship and, by tradition, an invitation to the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship.
The field features nine players in the top-20 of the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), including Swede Ingrid Lindblad (number two), Austrian Emma Spitz (number eight) and leading home hope Caley McGinty (number nine), who returns to England having competed for Great Britain and Ireland in the Curtis Cup at Merion.
The seven-strong Asia-Pacific challenge is being led by Australian Kelsey Bennett, 74th in the WAGR. Bennett was joint runner-up in last year’s Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific in Abu Dhabi as well as being a member of her country’s team at last month’s 42nd Queen Sirikit Cup in Singapore.
Two players from the Indian Queen Sirikit Cup team – Avani Prashanth (120th, WAGR) and Sneha Singh (139th) – are also competing at Hunstanton this week along with Thai Eila Galitsky (169th), Australian Abbie Teasdale (600th), Indian Nishna Patel (853rd) and Japan’s Ami Yamashita (1,351st).
McGinty’s GB&I team-mate Amelia Williamson, who will celebrate her 22nd birthday during the week of the Championship, is aiming to make the most of home advantage as a member of Hunstanton where she holds the course record (66).
“I probably haven’t played as much there as people might think because I only joined in 2017 and I’ve been away in college. But it’s a course I know well and feel comfortable on,” said Williamson.
“The fairway bunkers are really well positioned. If you can hit a lot of fairways it makes it easier, especially on the par-fives. If you can do that then most of them are probably reachable and that’s a huge advantage around Hunstanton.
“I’ll be confident but there are a lot of great players in the field. I’m just grateful I get to play such a massive tournament so close to home. It makes it so much easier for me to have family and friends there because that doesn’t happen a lot. My grandparents will be able to come and watch and that’s the main thing I’m excited about. That will make it a special week because they don’t get many opportunities to see me play.”
Meanwhile, Lindblad has arrived in Norfolk after an 11th place finish in the recent US Women’s Open, taking the low amateur honours, and is a strong contender for the title.
Her opening six-under-par 65 at Pine Needles set a new low round record by an amateur in the US Women’s Open and the Louisiana State University student is a multiple winner in US college golf, setting a new LSU record for all-time wins. She was runner-up in the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship, won the 2021 European Ladies Amateur Championship and notched up two professional wins in her native Sweden in the previous year.
Reigning Women’s Amateur Champion Louise Duncan (48th) is aiming to become the first golfer since Louise Stahle in 2005 to defend the title which she won at Kilmarnock (Barassie) last year. Her Scottish counterpart Hannah Darling, also back from the Curtis Cup, is hoping to make further progress in this year’s championship after a semi-final defeat to Duncan in 2021 and add the Women’s Amateur title to the R&A Girls’ Amateur Championship she won at Fulford in the same year.
Other players in the field to watch include German Alexandra Forsterling (12th, WAGR), Swede Meja Ortengren (15th), Spanish international Carolina Lopez-Chacarra (18th) and Italy’s Benedetta Moresco (26th).
The R&A will provide live broadcast coverage of the quarter-finals and semi-finals on Friday and the 36-hole Final on Saturday. This can be watched on The R&A’s website randa.org as well as its YouTube channel. This will also be available on the Sky Sports red button.
